Kevorkian Aids Two Suicides in Eight Hours

DETROIT â€”  Jack Kevorkian stepped up his campaign for doctor-assisted suicide Thursday, helping a woman with multiple sclerosis kill herself and then bringing the body of a man to the same hospital eight hours later.

Kevorkian was arrested at the hospital on a charge of being disorderly after he “became very loud and abusive toward the officers,� said Police Sgt. Ken Lewis of suburban Pontiac, Mich.

The bodies were the third and fourth Kevorkian has delivered to the hospital in eight days. Before the last body, Kevorkian had acknowledged helping 37 people die, nine since his most recent acquittal in May on assisted-suicide charges.

Kevorkian attorney Geoffrey Fieger said he did not know anything about the body that Dr. Robert Aranosian, director of the trauma center at the Pontiac Osteopathic Hospital, said Kevorkian took to the hospital about 9:10 p.m. EDT. Aranosian said the man appeared to be in his 60s.

Earlier Thursday at the same hospital, he brought in the body of Patricia Smith, a 40-year-old nurse from Lee’s Summit, Mo., who suffered from “rapidly progressing multiple sclerosis,� Fieger said.

The deaths came two days after the lethal injection of Louise Siebens, 76, of McKinney, Texas, who had Lou Gehrig’s disease. Kevorkian also helped Judith Curren, a nurse from Pembroke, Mass., who was diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome and other ailments, kill herself Aug. 15.

The death of Curren, whose marriage had a history of domestic violence and whose ailments were not fatal, led some in the medical community to question how thoroughly Kevorkian examines the background of those seeking his help.

Fieger has said Kevorkian extensively screens those who seek his help.